TITLE: The Throwbacks
GENRE: Women's Fiction
Will is planning to tell Lily he's HIV-positive at the end of their first date.
She pointed out her car, a hand-me-down Subaru from her mother, and Will parked beside it and shut off the engine.. Then he sat gripping the wheel as if he were still driving. He took a deep breath, turned, and opened his mouth to tell her everything.
"I-" he started.
Lily assumed he was about to say "I had a nice time" or "I'll give you a call," so to save him the trouble of making polite post-date chit chat, she kissed him. She kissed him and, stunned by the softness of her lips, he kissed her back. Lily closed her eyes and saw pinpricks of light in the darkness, like when you've been sitting for a long time and stand up too fast. As they kissed, Will took her face in his hands and they felt rough and gentle against her skin, both at once. Oh my God, she thought. This is it. This is him.
By the time she pried herself from his car and stumbled on weak legs to her own, it was the middle of the night. They'd been making out for hours. As she drove along the reservoir towards home, her hands trembled on the wheel. It was her everyday route, so familiar she didn't need to watch the road as she steered. Instead, she looked up through the windshield and saw that the sky was swirling with stars.
I liked the third and fourth paragraphs, and all the little details you included, but I found it a little strange that we started off in Will's head, then ended up in Lily's.
ReplyDeleteThere's no reason you can't tell the story from both Will's and Lily's perspectives, but for consistency's sake, you might try staying in one person's head for an entire scene, or an entire chapter, or whatever, instead of head-hopping from paragraph to paragraph.
Hope that helps. And good luck with this.
I think the first sentence is the set up for the kiss, not the beginning of the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Work on the POV and this could be really good. Also, I do find it a little odd to give a whole paragraph to the beginning of the kiss but then throw making out for hours into one line. I think this needs more attention.
ReplyDeleteI liked the basic premise, but I too had trouble following the head-jumping. I think it could be really good with a little work on that aspect though!
ReplyDeleteThe head-hopping is a real problem. Pulling off a kiss in omni is going to be really difficult...yet it's possible, if it's TRUE omni, including the perspective and POV of the narrator of the story. This doesn't have either...it sort of hops around.
ReplyDeleteI think all you have to do to eliminate the head-hopping is take out "opened his mouth to tell her everything." He could just open his mouth and say, "I-" so it's all from her perspective, not his. Other than that, it's Lily's POV and reads pretty smoothly. It is a little abrupt how you skip ahead in the last paragraph, tho.
ReplyDeleteThe possible head-hopping aside, I really liked the way the kiss was portrayed. The comparison of standing up too fast is a neat description of the way a good kiss makes you feel, without getting too flowery. I personally liked that the making out was reduced to a single sentence. The way she felt after making out is what's important. Not the making out itself. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteI think that everyone else mentioned the things that I picked up on. And another thing that frew me quickly out was this line - "like when you've been sitting for a long time and stand up too fast" - I think it was just the use of 'you' since it's 3rd person POV. I think simple rewording would do the trick. But I thought it was a very sweet excerpt and first kiss.
ReplyDeleteI really loved the little details but would stick to one POV in this scene, unless you change POv between these two characters only throughout the novel (the key is consistency).
ReplyDeleteI agree on the POV issue. We only have the excerpt to assume it should be from her POV. If the previous section was from his POV, then you need to change it to him or her. I like that the first kiss stood alone and the rest was suggested.
ReplyDeleteOther than the POV issue, it works for me. Good job.